Criticisms of Pascal

Another objection is based on the implicit assumptions concerning the nature of God as found within the Wager. How do we know that God will send believers to heaven and the nonbelievers to hell? What if a nonbeliever was a really good person - is it not possible that God would reward or show mercy to that person? Will God reward those who believe simply for the sake of receiving a tremendous payoff? Even among those who do believe in God the answers to the above questions will not be the same. In short, we can not know with certainty that the payoffs and penalties for faith are as Pascal assumed they would be.

If this God is a fair and just God, surely he will judge people on their actions in life, not on whether they happen to believe in him. A God who sends good and kind people to hell is not one most atheists would be prepared to consider worshipping.

Suppose the case that if God exists, non-believers will still go to Heaven because forgiveness is more important than punishment for a morally perfect God.

If the forgiveness is more important than punishment for a morally perfect God, all the people included the believers and non-believers will still go to Heaven. This is an objection of the decision matrix.

That mean the expected utility of the A2 will change from negative infinite to positive infinite. Both of the expectation of bet for and against God exists are the same. The decision matrix of the expected utility of the believer and non-believer will reconstruct as the following.

	God exists	God does not exist
Bet for God exists	Infinity	A1
Bet against God exists	Infinity(A2)	A3

The expectation (bet for God exists)

=P ×infinity + (1-P) ×A1 = infinite number

The expectation (bet for God does not exist)

= P ×infinity + (1-P) ×A3 = infinite number

When the expected utility is the same case in the believer and non-believer, the outcomes or the expectation for believers and non-believers are the same that they all go to heaven if such God does exist.

You make the decisions on the basis of considerations of maximum expected utility. In such case that either wager for or against god have the maximum expected utility. There is no difference whether the person believes or not and the Pascal’s Wager Argument is meaningless. There is no more reason to believe or not, so that the Pascal’s argument is irrelevant for this philosopher.

Go to Logic

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws